Archbishop Wenski Reminds Pro-Obama Catholics of What Chumps They Are

Archbishop Thomas Wenski points out that pro-Obama Catholics were played as chumps by President Obama in an essay which appeared on December 2 in the Miami Herald. Here is his essay interspersed with my comments:

In May 2009, President Obama gave the commencement address at Notre Dame University and received an honorary degree. That Notre Dame would confer an honorary degree on an elected official who advances abortion rights in contradiction to Catholic teaching caused no small controversy among many Catholics throughout the United States.

To say the least. That event demonstrated the de facto schism that exists in the Church between those who follow the teaching of the Church in regard to abortion and those who do not.

Those who supported Notre Dame felt vindicated, however, when in his speech the president promised to “honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion,” stating that his administration would provide “sensible” protections for those who wanted no involvement in the procedure. This would presumably include healthcare providers, social-service providers, and consumers who might otherwise have to pay through their healthcare plans for other people’s abortions.

Actually I do not think this is really correct. Catholics who thought that Obama getting a degree from a university dedicated to Our Lady was peachy could care less about the conscience rights of pro-lifers. I do agree that the powers that be at Notre Dame did point to this in their ceaseless effort to defend giving an honorary degree to the most pro-abort president in our nation’s history.

Obama later reiterated this position to Catholic newspaper editors, stating that he would make such protections “robust.”

And more fools they if they believed a syllable of it.

Fast forward to late 2011, and the record shows that the president’s promises are not being kept. In fact, it seems that pro-life Catholics such as Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak and the Catholic Health Association’s Sister Carol Keenan — who trusted the administration’s position that abortion was not part of the healthcare bill — along with Notre Dame’s leadership have been played by the president.

Granting the title of pro-life to Stupak and Keenan seems a stretch to me. Unless they are stupid beyond belief they knew precisely what they were doing when they helped get Obamacare passed, and hang the unborn. As for the powers that be at Notre Dame…..actually since this is a family blog I will refrain from stating what I think of them.

His administration is running roughshod over conscience protection provisions long part of the law that find their justification in the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, a foundational human right. It is one thing for an administration to support and promote an agenda; it is quite another to force those who disagree with it to violate their moral and religious principles.

Any sentient person, based upon Obama’s record, knew precisely that he would do this. The Catholics who supported Obama in 2008, leaving aside the invincibly ignorant, either could care less or are actively cheering him on.

The long line of evidence is disturbing. As a first step, the administration reversed earlier regulations enforcing federal conscience laws, stating instead that it would pursue the same goals by educational outreach on rights of conscience.

Typical of the mendacity which is the hallmark of the Obama administration.

In the final healthcare bill passed in March 2010, traditional protections for conscience rights were omitted; instead, a provision was included that would subjugate conscience rights to federal and state “emergency” service laws. In other words, any abortion declared an “emergency” (broadly defined) by a government requires a health-care provider’s full cooperation, regardless of his or her views on the matter.

As pointed out by opponents of Obamacare at the time.

Moreover, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has issued a rule which will require almost all health plans to include coverage for sterilization and contraception — including abortifacient drugs. This will force almost all employers — including Catholic organizations — to pay for such procedures, regardless of any moral objections. HHS seemingly wants to regard fertility as a disease — and elective abortion subsidized by the taxpayer as healthcare.

What this administration intends is to make every institution of the Catholic Church in this country complicit in supporting intrinsic evil. Tolerance of differing opinions is not in the lexicon of Obama and his merry band of would be thought police.

The most recent frontal assault on conscience rights has come in the form of federal contracts and grant announcements, which have begun to require grantees to help provide all legally permissible family planning and obstetric/gynecological services, regardless of the provider. A large number of grants under the State Department’s AIDS program, for example, now require “integration” with family planning and “reproductive health” services, ignoring the conscience clause the program’s authorizing statute passed by Congress.

In short, a return to the days of Catholics Need Not Apply.

When the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops recently said it could not meet a similar requirement inserted into an HHS grant announcement for services to human trafficking victims, and pointed out that the requirement violates existing federal conscience laws, its funding was discontinued — hurting victims of human trafficking since few if any other entities have the track record and nationwide capacity to serve them.

Nothing is more important to these folks than the sacred right, or should I say rite, of abortion.

Catholic social and healthcare providers — the largest private network in the nation — are at risk of being left out of all federal programs, despite their well-earned reputation for providing superlative service to the American public. In effect, the Obama administration is telling these Catholic providers to surrender their conscience rights and their Catholic ethos or shut their doors.

To the Obama administration the only good Catholic is an unfaithful one.

Regardless of one’s position on the morality of abortion, we — and elected officials on both sides of the aisle — should be concerned with these developments. If religious and conscience rights of some Americans can be violated by the government, everyone else’s rights are also in jeopardy.

Catholics and other pro-lifers are being treated as second class citizens by a bunch of Leftist bigots and we should not tolerate this for an instant.

This is unacceptable, for it undermines our nation’s promise of “freedom and justice for all.” The president should honor his pledges to U.S. Catholics — and other Americans — and instruct his agencies to reverse course and protect conscience rights.

When pigs fly Archbishop, unless he believes that his current stance hurts him politically.

This a good column by the Archbishop but it fails to hit hard enough the key problem. Without Catholic votes Obama would not be in office. Too many Catholics are not only CINOs, but they rejoice in opposing the Church in regard to abortion. We are seeing the bitter fruit of bad catechesis for almost two generations, and too many ecclesiastics, unlike the Archbishop, who have failed to stand up. Ignorance and cowardice are a bad combination, and unfortunately the Church in America has had far too much of both over the past four and a half decades.

21 Responses to Archbishop Wenski Reminds Pro-Obama Catholics of What Chumps They Are

The good Archbishop is too charitable. It seems clear to me that the likes of Stupak,
Keenan, and the administration of Notre Dame were all willing tools for this president’s
agenda. In the unlikely event that these people truly are so naive and so incompetent
that they allowed themselves to be played, then they have no business in Congress or
overseeing Catholic healthcare or running (what was once) a Catholic university.

Incompetence is not the same as treachery, but it often achieves the same results.
I believe these people to be knowing traitors to their Church. However, even if they
are mere dupes and fools, then they still have no business continuing in positions
where the Church must count on them to defend Her.

I wonder if the archbishop realizes just how many Catholic females get abortions every year? The abortion tables are filled to overflowing with Catholic girls and women. I have personally known many. There are more than a few Catholic husbands and fathers who will never know that their wives and daughters were among those who aborted.

There seems to be a small but increasing number of US bishops starting to speak up.

Time is well past for them to put up a united front, name and shame the politicians and those in high office who make a mockery of Church teaching and insult the Church by boldly calling themselves Catholic – that brings the Church into disrepute.

Sadly, our 7 bishops aren’t much better – we have only one conservative bishop, the others are fairly liberal. They are presently on their way to Rome for their Ad Limina visit. I suspect quite a rap over the knuckles for the.

They made a mess of printing the new missal, so we have not yet introduced the new translation (except for what the congregation say – that was introduced last year) so New Zealand is technically in schism with the rest of the Roman Catholic Church because of our bishops’ incopetence.

Obama later reiterated this position to Catholic newspaper editors, stating that he would make such protections “robust.”

Ignorance and cowardice are a bad combination, and unfortunately the Church in America has had far too much of both over the past four and a half decades.

Obedient faithful ready and waiting for loud, clear direction … parish bulletins and sermons are their prime educational, formative news source. If only there were a way to download serious, official insights to the weekly, in the same way the little, happy, generally without impact, essays on the weekly readings are done.

“HHS seemingly wants to regard fertility as a disease — and elective abortion subsidized by the taxpayer as healthcare.”

“What this administration intends is to make every institution of the Catholic Church in this country complicit in supporting intrinsic evil. Tolerance of differing opinions is not in the lexicon of Obama and his merry band of would be thought police.”

The faithful need to have right words for response to so many critical, cynical attacks on their virtues. Government legislates tolerance of atrocity. Catholic (Christian) consciences become “the intolerant”.

Catholic votes may have helped Obama get elected, but whether they will help him get re-elected remains to be seen. Of late there have been reports that Obama has pretty much given up on trying to win the white, working-class vote. This would, I suspect, include a lot of the blue collar, pro-union Catholics who voted for him last time mainly out of traditional loyalty to the Democratic Party. Most pundits attribute this to the economy but I strongly suspect his attacks against the Church and its institutions have a lot to do with it also.

What T. Shaw said: “Get to Confession. You won’t be going to heaven if you voted for Obama.”

I would amend this statement for two things: (1) some people voted for Obama out of ignorance; now is the time for them to prove they have learned their lesson, and (2) those who deliberately voted for Obama regardless of his evil can always repent.

Before we go off consigning all Obama voters to hell, keep this in mind: Pope Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, issued a statement on the question of voting that said voting for a pro-abortion candidate was a sin if the vote was cast in direct SUPPORT of the candidate’s pro-abortion stance. He also went on to say that voting for a pro-abortion candidate IN SPITE OF his stand could be morally permitted in the presence of “proportionate reasons.”

The $64 gazillion question in this case, of course, is what constitutes “proportionate reasons.” Some argue that there are no proportionate reasons whatsoever that justify voting for any pro-abortion candidate. Others (including Pope John Paul II in “Evangelium Vitae,” along with a number of bishops) say that in a contest between two or more candidates who are both or all pro-abortion, voting for the least aggressively pro-abortion candidate in order to minimize the potential damage provides a proportionate reason.

Another possibly proportionate reason to vote for a pro-abortion candidate (e.g. a “moderate” Republican) could be if they belong to a party that is generally pro-life or conservative and voting for them will help keep that party in control of one’s state or national legislature. (That is why I voted, very reluctantly, for Sen. Mark Kirk last year; RINO though he may be, there was a chance his election would enable the GOP to take control of the Senate, and the alternative would have been an even more pro-abort liberal Democrat.)

Still others (including myself) might argue that a pro-abortion candidate could, in some circumstances, be preferable to an ostensibly pro-life candidate who is so obviously corrupt, incompetent, mentally unstable or otherwise unqualified for the office that he or she would expose the public to grave danger if elected (e.g. by starting a nuclear war). I cannot, however, think of a single instance so far in which I personally have been faced with this choice.

It’s possible that a sincere Catholic might have voted for Obama in 2008 in spite of his position on abortion because they were truly convinced that McCain and Palin were dangerously incompetent for the offices of POTUS and VPOTUS. If that is the case, I wouldn’t assume they were guilty of mortal sin. However, they may not have the same excuse this time around, now that we have seen how dangerously incompetent AND aggressively pro-abortion Obama has turned out to be.

Many people, Catholics included, voted against the McCain / Palin ticket for no other reason than that they hated the idea of a beautiful conservative Christian woman being VP.

There were NO propotionate reasons to have voted for that man of sin now in the Oval Office. Many people wanted hope and change regardless that they KNEW he’s a baby-murdering, sodomy sanctifying anti-christ, no matter what and by golly they got their hope and change. He deserves every bit what God allowed to befall King Manasseh because like King Manasseh before him, that’s the only thing that will force him to repent of his narcissistic evil.

Thankyou Archbishop Wenski, for speaking out. It’s a shame that every Cardinal and Bishop in this country didn’t speak out prior to Obama’s speaking at Notre Dame, or any other institution which calls itself Catholic! They take money on the pretense of being a Catholic institution, but it’s actually the difference between Roman Catholicism, and American Catholicism which doesn’t admit to being at great odds with Roman Catholicism. Unfortunately many of the “sheeple” don’t know the difference and it’s not made clear in many parishes today.

I think some Catholics will not vote for some Republican candidates because they support waterboarding. Putting aside the evil of abortion, to which Obama is completely dedicated, I think we need to consider the constant attacks on the family by Obama and the Democrats.

“… I refuse to support any politician who supports either.” Then don’t vote.

Hypothetical scenario: a terrorist knows the location of a bomb set to detonate in some unnamed school in some unnamed large city. Waterboarding can force the terrorist to reveal the location of the bomb and save hundreds of children’s lives. But some people opposed to waterboarding would rather the children die.

What would Charles Martel have done during the battle against the Islamic fanatics in Tours, France so long ago? Hand the city over to the demonic fanatics? Make peace in our time because peace at any price outweighs the freedom and safety of our children?

Some people simply prefer dhimmitude, but not this American, not this Christian!

Sandi Trusso @ 7:22AM: “It’s a shame that every Cardinal and bishop in this country
didn’t speak out prior to Obama’s speaking at Notre Dame…”.

Actually, in a surprising show of unity, they did. As I remember, about 100 to 120
bishops published open letters of protest concerning ND’s decision to honor Obama.
It’s likely that many other bishops wrote in protest but chose not to make their letters
public. I have a hard time thinking of any subject that has united our bishops in such
a way. With so many bishops pointing out their errors, Notre Dame has absolutely
no room to claim that they could not have known that what they did was both wrong
and stupid. Notre Dame is run by willing tools of the culture of death. Our bishops
did a good day’s work pointing that out.